Starcraft - Speed Of Darkness

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. AnOriginalPublication of POCKET BOOKS POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 STARCRAFT © 2002 Blizzard Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. StarCraft and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 ISBN: 0-7434-2319-4 POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com “Don’t look back! Run, you bastards! Run!” Ardo ran next to Littlefield, the metal case banging wildly between them. His free hand held his rifle, swinging as it spewed carnage indiscriminately in his path. There was no effort to fire for effect—all he could do as he ran was random damage and add to the carnage already taking place. The flames wrapped around Ardo as he crossed the line. The footing had already gotten difficult, the ground slick with charred and ruptured Zerg. Still the metal box banged against his leg, letting him know that Littlefield was still there, still running and pulling him forward. An unearthly scream tore across the com channel. It continued, an ear-piercing squeal of terror. The internal temperature of his battle armor was growing by the moment. He could feel his hands and feet starting to blister. Suddenly he ran directly into a standing Zergling. Ardo screamed but did not stop, knocking the creature down in his rush before both vanished from each other amid the conflagration. “Keep running, you dogs!” Breanne spat through the com channel. Her own voice had an edge to it Ardo had never heard before. Was she winded or just afraid? “Keep running and don’t look back!” Instinctively, Ardo looked. To the fine men and women of the U.S.S. Carl Vinson(CVN-70). May God go with you as you cross the beach and grant you calm seas on your journey home. Vis per mare. THE SPEED OF DARKNESS Chapter 1Downfall Chapter 2Mar Sara Chapter 3Out Country Chapter 4Littlefield Chapter 5Mission Elapsed Time Chapter 6Rabbit Hole Chapter 7Spit and Polish Chapter 8Seeing the Elephant Chapter 9Fall Back Shapter 10The Gauntlet Chapter 11Homecoming Chapter 12Ghost Town Chapter 13Merdith Chapter 14Diminishing Returns Chapter 15Mind's Eye Chapter 16Barricades Chapter 17Weak Links Chapter 18Jaws of Victory Chapter 19Debts Chapter 20Sirens Chapter 21Seige Chapter 22Farewell About the Author CHAPTER 1 DOWNFALL GOLDEN . . . That was his word for it, that rare, perfect day that warms the soul with a golden glow of joy. There was peace in a golden day. Some days were gray, hung with leaden clouds and rain punctuated by brilliant flashes of burning white and rolling thunder. Other days were a vibrant cold blue arching over the frost-encrusted domes and sheds of the settlement. Some days were even red—the evening sky painted by the dust in the spring winds before the crops had gotten their own hold on the soil. Some days even extended into the night with a velvety cobalt blanket across the sky. He liked those autumn nights when he could leave his world behind by staring up into that rich darkness. God had put pinpricks in the dome of the night, he imagined, so that His light could shine through. As a child he had searched the stars, hoping to see through to the other side and catch some glimpse of this Creator. He had never stopped looking, even though he had reached his nineteenth birthday and had thought himself too mature for such things. Each day held different colors for him. He had experienced them in all their hues. Each held a memory and a place in his heart. Yet none in his experience could compare to a golden day. It was the color of the wheat fields that rolled like waves across the low hills stretching out from his father’s homestead. Golden was the warmth of the sun on his face. Golden was the glow he felt within him. Golden was the color of her hair and the sound of her voice. “You’re dreaming again, Ardo,” she whispered playfully. “Come back to me. You are much too far away!” He opened his eyes. She was golden. “Melani, I’m right here.” Ardo smiled. “No, you aren’t.” She pouted—a formidable weapon in getting her way. “You’re off dreaming again and you’ve left me behind.” He rolled onto his side, propping his head up on one elbow so that he could get a better look at her. She was just a year younger than he. Her family had arrived back when Ardo was nine years old, another group in a long line of religious refugees that fell from the sky to join with other Saints in Helaman Township. Refugee survivors had been gathering from nearly all the planets of the Confederacy back then—reluctantpioneers of the stars. Many devout religious groups had been among the first to be outlawed by the United Powers League on Earth back in ’31. It was not a new story to Saints and Martyrs. Throughout humanity’s history, those who did not understand the faithful had driven them from place to place and home to home. That they should be driven from planet to planet, then star to star, was beginning to sound painfully repetitious in their Heritage classes. Now, exiles once more, families of the faithful were scattered among the ill-fated transports of the ATLAS project, and when that mission ended in such cataclysmic failure, those families who survived searched desperately for their brothers and sisters. When communication was finally established between worlds, the Patriarchs chose an outlying region on a world they called Bountiful for their new home. Soon, Orbital Dropships were landing at the Zarahemla Starport daily. The newly arrived families would then make their way to the outlying settlements as best they could. Arthur and Keti Bradlaw, with their wide-eyed daughter, were one of five families that arrived that day. Ardo had joined his father as the entire township came out to welcome the new families and get them settled. Ardo could not remember much about Melani then, although he had been vaguely aware of the stick of a girl who seemed awkward, lonely, and shy. He first took real notice of her when her fourteenth year brought some rather remarkable changes. The “stickgirl” seemed to burst into his awareness like a butterfly unfolding from its chrysalis. Her features held a natural beauty—body painting and makeup were frowned upon by the Patriarchs of the township—and it had been Ardo’s great good fortune to have been the first to approach her. His heart and soul fell into her large, luminescent blue eyes. The nimbus of her long, shining hair played softly in the warm breeze drifting over the wheat fields. The wind carried the distant hum of the mill and the faint scent of the bread at the bakery. Golden. “I may be off dreaming, but I’ll never leave you behind,” he said to her, smiling. The wheat rustled about the blanket where they lay. “Tell me where you want to go. I’ll take you there!” “Right now?” Her laugh was sunshine. “In your dreams?” “Sure!” Ardo pulled himself up to kneel on the heavy blanket he had spread out for them. “Anywhere in the stars!” “I can’t go anywhere.” She smiled. “I have a test in Sister Johnson’s Hydroponics class this afternoon! Besides,” she said more earnestly. “Why would I want to go anywhere else at all? Everything I want is right here.” Golden. Who could ever leave on such a golden day? “Then let’s not go anywhere,” he said eagerly. “Let’s stay here . . . and get married.” “Married?” She looked at him, half bemused and half questioning. “I told you, I have Hydroponics class this afternoon.” “No, I mean it.” Ardo had been working himself up for this for some time. “I’ve graduated, and things are working out really well on Dad’s agraplots. He said he was thinking of giving me forty acres at the far end of the homestead. It’s the sweetest place, right up near the base of the canyon. There’s a spot there next to the river where . . . where . . . Melani?” The girl with the golden hair did not hear him. She sat up, her blue eyes squinting toward the township. “The siren, Ardo!” Then he heard it, too. The distant wail, rising and falling across the fields. Ardo shook his head. “They always sound it at noon . . .” “But itisn’tnoon, Ardo.” The sun was eclipsed in that instant. Ardo leaped up, wheeling around toward the darkened sky. His mouth fell open as the lengthening shadow surged across the yellowed fields of wheat. Ardo’s eyes went wide with the rush of fear. Adrenaline roared into his veins. Enormous plumes of smoke trailed behind fireballs roaring directly toward him from the western end of the broad valley. Ardo quickly reached down and pulled Melani to her feet. His mind raced. They had to run, find shelter . . . But where could they go? Melani screamed, and he realized that there was nowhere to go and noplace safe to hide. The fireballs seemed so close that both of them ducked. The flames arched over them, the thunderous sound of their fury quickly drowning the distant warning siren. The shadow of their wake covered the entire valley. Five enormous columns crossed overhead, their fingers reaching over Ardo and Melani toward the clustered buildings of Helaman Township. Then the fireballs wheeled as one, lifted over the township, and descended in roiling flames into Segard Yohansen’s instantly ruined fields, about a mile past the center of Helaman. Ardo shook—whether from fear or excitement he could not tell—but at least his stupor had ended. He clasped Melani’s arm and began pulling at her. “Come on! We’ve got to get into the town before they shut the gates! Come on!” She needed no further urging. They ran. He could not remember how they got into town. The golden day had turned a muddy brown fading to gray from the smoke that still coated the sky overhead. It was an oppressive color, slate and cold. It seemed so out of place here. “We’ve got to find my Uncle Dez,” he heard himself say. “He has a shop in the compound! Come on! Come on!” Ardo and Melani struggled to move through the center of the township, now crowded with refugees. Helaman originally had been nothing but an outpostin the far reaches of Bountiful. Its town center was the original fortress compound with the defensive wall encompassing the main buildings. Since then, the town had grown well beyond those central walls. Now more than ten thousand people called Helaman their home—and nearly all of them had poured into the safety of the old fortress compound. He could just see the sign “Dez Hardwarez” across the packed central square. The rattle of automatic weapons clattered suddenly from the perimeter wall. Two dull explosive thuds resounded, followed by even more chattering machine guns. A cry arose from the crowd in the square. Ardo felt more than heard the fear in the seething mob. Shouts rang out, some strident and others calming. The smoke overhead cast an oppressive veil over the surging mob. “Please, Ardo!” Melani said, “I . . . Where do we go? What do we do?” Ardo glanced around. He could taste the panic in the air. “We just need to get across the square,” he choked out, then, seeing the look in her eyes. “We’ve done it hundreds of times.” “But, Ardo—” “It isn’t any farther than it was before. Just a little more crowded, that’s all.” Ardo looked at the tears welling up in those beautiful blue eyes. He squeezed her hand tightly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be right here with you.” Somehow, they were halfway across the square when it came. A sheet of flame erupted beyond the fortress’s outer wall. Its crimson light flashed against the blanket of smoke that hung oppressively over the town. The blood-red hue electrified the panicked crowd in the square. Screams, shouts, and cries all tumbled into a cacophony of sound, but several disembodied voices penetrated Ardo’s thoughts clearly. “Where are the Confederacy forces? Where are the Marines?” “Don’t argue with me! Get the children! Stay together!” “It can’t be the Zerg! They couldn’t have penetrated so far into the Confederacy . . .” Zerg? Ardo had heard rumors about them. Nightmares, so he thought, to scare children or keep outsiders from settling in the Outer Colonies. He could not remember all the whispered tales, but the nightmare was here now, and very real. Another voice penetrated his thoughts. He turned toward her. “Ardo, I’m frightened!” Melani’s eyes were wide and liquid. “What is it? What’s going on?” Ardo opened his mouth. He could not answer her question. No words came out. There were so many words he wanted to say to her in that moment—so many words that he would regret never having said for uncounted years to come. But no words came out. A light flared. He felt the heat on his back. He turned, holding Melani behind him. The eastern wall had been breached. The old rampart was being pulled down from the other side, dismantled before Ardo’s eyes. It seemed as though a dark wave was breaking against the breach, an undulating silhouette. Then details lodged in his mind: a gleaming purple carapace, red-streaked ivory claws sliding from a colonist’s limp body, the arching, snakelike bodies writhing across the broken stone. It was unthinkable. . . . The nightmare had come to Bountiful. The shoulder-to-shoulder crowd in the square roared their deep fear and turned to run from the breach. There was nowhere to go. Zerg Hydralisks had already crested the opposite wall, cascading into the street like black drops from a greasy spill. Within moments, hideous cobralike hoods had unfolded above their razor-sharp talons. They arched their tails upward. Armored spikes exploded from their serrated shoulder sockets and darted with deadly effect into the western edge of the crowd. Those facing the new threat suddenly tried to reverse direction, crushing back into the surging crowd behind them. Ardo heard Melani gasp behind him. “I can’t . . . I can’t breathe . . .” The mob was crushing them. Ardo looked desperately around him, trying to find a way out. Movement overhead caught his eye. A bloated,bulbous form like a disembodied brain drifted over the colony wall. Tendrils hung like viscera beneath it, quivering with activity. It was reaching down for the center of the crowd. Ardo had heard tales in which the Zerg had captured colonists and taken them alive to a fate that could only be worse than death. Tears flooded Ardo’s eyes. There was nowhere to go and nothing left to do. Suddenly the Zerg Overlord drifting above the colony shuddered and slid sideways. Several explosions erupted from the side of the hideous beast. The Overlord exploded in an enormous fireball. The Zerg Hydralisks entering the compound suddenly hesitated. A wing of five Confederacy Wraith fighters ripped through the smoke overhead, the scream of their engines nearly drowning out the cries of the terrified crowd below. Twenty-five-millimeter burst lasers pulsed repeatedly as the Wraiths wheeled through the air, the bolts slamming against targets on the far side of the crumbling fortress wall. One of the Wraiths wavered suddenly, then exploded under a hail of ground fire from the outraged Zerg. The Zerg who had entered the compound were pressing their attack, killing some and dragging others off without apparent distinction. They had corralled the humans; now all they had to do was harvest them from the edges of the crowd inward. A second flight of Wraiths tore through the smoke-blackenedsky. Then a single Confederacy Dropship ripped through the air, spinning in a rapid breaking maneuver and descending toward the square. The downblast from the engines created an instant hurricane on the ground. Trees bent over nearly double. It was impossible to hear anything over the roar of the engines. People all about Ardo tumbled to the ground, shielding themselves from the gale. Ardo blinked through the dust. The Dropship continued to hover but managed somehow to lower its transport ramp into the square. He could see the silhouetted figure of a Confederacy Marine beckoning to them. Everyone else in the square saw the Marine also. Mindlessly they charged the ramp. A human tide pulled Ardo along. He lost Melani’s hand. “Melani!” he screamed. He tried to fight against the crushing press of the panicked crowd. His words were lost in the roar of the Dropship’s engines. “Melani!” He saw her behind him. The Zerg were pressing their attack with anger now. The Dropship was depriving them of their prize. Ardo was appalled at how quickly the large crowd had been sundered—harvested like blood-red wheat in the field. The Zerg were already nearly at Melani’s side. Ardo clawed and fought. He screamed. Three Hydralisks grasped Melani at once, dragging her back from the edge of the crowd. “Please, Ardo!” she wept. “Don’t leave me alone!” The mindless mob pushed him farther into the ship. Zerg claws suddenly rang against the sides of the Dropship. The pilot had played out all the time his luck would afford. The ship responded instantly to his command, lurching upward away from the Zerg and bearing Ardo away from his home, his life, and his love. “Don’t leave me alone!”Those were her last words to him, pounding through his mind and soul, louder and louder, threatening to burst his skull . . . Ardo’s world went black. It would stay black for a very long time. CHAPTER 2 MAR SARA “ALL RIGHT, YOU RAW MEAT! HANG ON TO YOUR asses! We’re takin’ the long fall!” Private Ardo Melnikov did not bother to glance at the sergeant as he barked at them. The man was a tic—temporarily in command—for this drop. Odds were that Ardo would never see the man once they were down. It was best to just stay out of the man’s way until Ardo’s new platoon was sorted out for the mission. He could barely hear the tic above the screaming engines of the Dropship and the thunder of their hot descent buffeting the hull. There was just something about the sergeant that seemed to require a full voice and an angry eye. In any event, it really did not matter to Ardo—the sergeant was just baby-sitting them down to the surface. Once he got there, Ardo knew there would be someone who would make his life miserable on a more permanent basis. Ardo shrugged his shoulders, trying to lift his backaway from the wall pad. The interior of the Dropship was normally a hot box, but most especially during the plunge down through the atmosphere. This particular Dropship was at least two cooling units shy of keeping everyone comfortable. Now a growing patch of sweat was sticking his shoulder blades to the nonporous cushion. Sweat beaded up on his face and occasionally dropped down the front of his fatigues. The restraining bar prevented him from finding any relief from the pooling discomfort gathering at various junction points of his uniform. Worse yet, the Dropship was fully loaded—packed shoulder to shoulder and bulkhead to bulkhead. The heat was not nearly so oppressive as the growing smell that was overwhelming the air scrubbers. There was nothing for him to look at except the same slack and blank faces of the other Marine recruits strapped against the bulkhead across from him. There was nothing for him to listen to except the sergeant’s occasional growl and the uniform roar of the hull behind him. There was nothing for him to do but wait it out with his own thoughts . . . and that was the last thing he wanted. They haunted him, those thoughts lurking at the back of his mind. It seemed to him sometimes that the ghosts pursued him from inside his own head. Closing his eyes never banished those specters. No sound could drown them out for long. Those ghosts were all painfully bright and beautiful, terrible and crushing. They would wait quietly, patiently at theedge of his conscious thought, kept at bay by his will alone. Sometimes he would be arrogant enough to think he had them mastered and banished once and for all. Then some smell of ripening grass or plowed earth would waft past him on a breeze, or a glint of the color of light honey, or a distant whispered laugh, or some indefinable quality of his surroundings, and the demons would rush back, overwhelming him. He would have bled tears just at the thought of them if he could. All he wanted was to fight. He needed to fight. It was the only thing that really kept the demons at bay. He could concentrate on the mission and its objectives . . . or at least those minor objectives that his commander deemed necessary for him to know. Grand strategy was not his purview. It was none of his business. His job was to do whatever he was told to do and with as little thought as necessary. That suited him just fine. The howling of the Dropship was tapering off. The vehicle had finally spent its energy against the atmosphere of whatever world they were plunging toward. The engines were doing their best now to make the ship imitate the grace of a bird in flight. Ardo chuckled to himself at the thought. The Quantradyne APOD-33 was the Confederacy’s proof to the stars that anything with a big enough engine would fly—no matter how badly. Of course, he had made many training jumps before. Each was completely unremarkableand he really did not care to recall them in any detail. Why reflect on something so painful as time to be still and think? Better to concentrate on something else . . . anything else. Ardo began scanning the faces of the Marines around him. It was an exercise in self-preservation. It was always a good idea to know the Marines around you. You never knew when your life might depend on one of them . . . or be threatened by one. The woman sitting across from him seemed to be a good example of one kind or the other—it was just that Ardo was not all that sure of which. She had close-cropped blond hair that stood in neat bristles from a well-shaped scalp. Her face was drawn tight, with angular cheekbones that sharply framed two shining, steel-tinged eyes. They stared unfocused at some distant point past Ardo’s shoulder, unblinking yet shuttered windows into any soul she might possess.Those eyes could freeze a river solid in midsummer,he thought. He was left to his own imagination as to what the rest of her looked like. The powered combat suit she wore effectively hid any physical distinction she might otherwise have displayed, but it did tell him one thing: her suit markings were that of an officer. That meant danger to a private no matter how you cut it. Avoidance of an officer is the first thing a private learns—especially in casual conversation. Thelast private he could remember being too familiar with his squad leader ended up with a hole where his head had been. The female officer had not said a word since they boarded the Dropship. She was perfectly welcome to let her silence continue as far as Ardo was concerned.Speak when spoken to,he thought.Otherwise, do not go looking for trouble. At leastshewas comfortable, Ardo thought. Her suit was self-cooling, and he could see the power umbilical plugged into the Dropship’s power bus. Ardo suspected that her chill went well beyond the physical. Someday he, too, would learn the intricate skills necessary to wear the CMC-300—maybe even the new 400 model. That day was a long way off, of course. Still, it would be a lot better to wear in combat than a few layers of ablative cloth and one’s standard-issue underwear. If he could just manage to live long enough to get a combat suit of his own, his prospects would improve considerably. Well, hopefully they would at least give him some training in a weapon. He had not even had the chance to do that yet. The rest of the compartment was filled with grunts just like himself. Each of them wore the standard-issue detached look of a Confederacy Security Marine. Each of them dripped Confederacy sweat through their Confederacy fatigues, as was their duty. Ardo’s eye fell for a time, however, on one particularly large private. The man was enormous—Ardo remembered the prep crew had some trouble getting his harness to lock closed—and he would not stop his incessant yammering for a moment. Ardo could not imagine where they had found a uniform that would fit him. He was dark complexioned, and Ardo vaguely recalled the ancient United Powers League back on Earth had once qualified the man as “South Seas Islander.” He had broad, angular features and full lips. His hair was a long mane that flowed back from his forehead and down his neck in natural black waves. The giant was gung-ho certifiable—one of those all-for-the-wall, eat-their-hearts-for-breakfast psychotics who was the first person you would want to come and pull you out of the fire and the last person you would want to follow into one. “Get this junkwad on the ground!” The giant laughed beneath his bright eyes. “I’ve got some death to deal out! Want to roast me some Zerg on a spit! Maybe eat their brains straight off!” The islander threw his head back and laughed too loudly once more. He slapped his massive hands down on the thighs of the two Marines sitting next to him. They both winced so hard from the impact that tears pooled in their eyes. “We’ll eat them for dinner, eh? Big Zerg feast! Ha! Just put this flying trashyard on the ground before I open it myself!” The pilot in the sealed cockpit forward of the drop-bay could not possibly have heard the request but seemed willing just the same to accommodate it. Theship pivoted noticeably—Ardo knew this was a standard clearing maneuver just before landing—and the engines whined a little differently. A final bump, and the engines suddenly spindled down. The lieutenant in front of Ardo wasted no time unplugging herself from the Dropship power, managing to get herself free before the restraining bar had lifted completely out of the way. A deft move with her free hand brought her duffel bag down from the overhead racks. She was already moving toward the ramp as it began lowering at the back of the ship. She even beat the islander, who seemed to be in his own hurry to get into whatever fight he could either find or manufacture. Ardo took his time, tugging at his fatigues to pull them free of each of the places sweat had stuck them to his body. He could smell the change in the atmosphere already blowing in through the open ramp. An achingly dry breeze swept the musty dampness out of the compartment like a furnace. He pulled his own duffel bag from the racks and followed the others as they straggled out the back of the Dropship. “Get your asses out here, ladies,” the sergeant snarled. “We haven’t got all day!” The air was oven-hot and dry—drier than Ardo ever remembered breathing. A stiff breeze carried the furnace heat around him. His sweat evaporated almost at once as he stepped onto the tarmac of the spaceport. Ardo glanced grimly around. He had stepped into hell. The world was a rusting red, colored by the sand that seemed to add its own tint to every building and vehicle regardless of its original color. The effect was all the more enhanced by the flaming dawn just breaking over the starport . . . [...]... and into a world of chaos A company of Marines in power armor had formed a perimeter around the Confederacy section of the starport, cordoning off the military units Beyond them, Ardo could see as he quick-marched across the tarmac, literally thousands of colonists pressed against the Marine line Men, women, and children—a screaming mass of humanity—struggled desperately for a way off the planet Beyond... teaching about the fall of the ancients and the sin of pride Peace comes from within, a joyful knowledge of the pure voice of God speaking to each man “Thou shalt not kill,” he says, but he raises an AGR-14 gauss rifle in the front of the class “Here, Ardo,” the brother says, walking to where the boy sat near the back of the classroom He hands the 8-millimeter automatic weapon to the young boy who has... the sound of his name and then froze His feet refused to move any closer to the terrifying, darkened doorway His eyes locked on the passage beyond Rows of man-size tubes, each filled with a blue-green liquid, lined each side of the passageway “Melnikov, what the hell ?” They would pack him in one of those tubes and as soon as they did the nightmare would begin “Melnikov!” It was like a coffin ... way sir.” Tegis went slack “I I’ll just get thisfine piece of machineoff the ground for you, then.” “You do that, sir Thank you, sir,” Cutter said, pushing each of them apart as he let them go Staggering slightly, each of the former combatants found a great deal of interest in the ground at his feet as they moved off to take care of business elsewhere Ardo let out his breath in a sigh “What about... forward bunker position at three-nine-two-seven in support ofthe Confederacy evacuation; second, recon enemy activity forward of that position, and, finally, pick up a little bauble that command lost along the way That’s all.” “Uh, Lieutenant,” Cutter asked “What kind of bauble?” “You’ll know when I see it, Cutter,” Breanne said “On board you’ll find a scanner plug-in for your armor It has been precalibrated... immediate deployment.” Lieutenant Breanne extended two fingers together as she indicated the Marines around her “Cutter, Wabowski, both of you will prep Firebat cat-five The rest of you prep for recon-in-force, cat-three configuration.” Ardo ran through the category-3 checklist in a moment: power armor, Impaler gauss rifle with infantry loads, no field pack fast on their feet and ready for anything... was coated in frost “Private Melnikov, isn’t it? How good of you to obey an order at last.” Her eyes flicked over toward the sergeant “Mr Littlefield, do you think this fresh-out -of- the-can Marine is worth my trouble?” “Ma’am by your grace, ma’am!” Ardo glanced sideways at the sergeant There seemed to be a smile playing at the edge of his mouth “I doubt it,” Breanne snapped “Step forward, Private!”...Or what was left of the starport Nearly half of the seven launch control towers originally scattered around the sprawling installation were on fire Two of them were crested only with broken rubble Columns of smoke from various other fires could be seen rising from buildings of the starport itself More telling, larger columns could be seen rising from the central city district of the colony several... plasma fire that trailed behind him The outskirts of the central city fell quickly behind Below was a wasteland, cratered and scarred black from the battles that had preceded him here The scattered carnage of desperate struggles dotted the shattered land The occasional hulks of Vulture hover-cycles and hundreds of civilian transports formed twisted, black-metal flower petals here and there Ardo sailed... but was smooth-faced and sported his hair close-cropped The guy was so clean he probably squeaked when he walked “This piece of abandoned trash isn’t even up to beingcalledabandoned trash!” Tegis stood away from the landing strut and growled menacingly “You piece of dog puke! This ship is a thing of beauty! There’s not another one like her in the entire fleet!” “That’s because therestof the fleet is . in natural black waves. The giant was gung-ho certifiable—one of those all-for-the-wall, eat-their-hearts-for-breakfast psychotics who was the first person. Wabowski, both of you will prep Firebat cat-five. The rest of you prep for recon-in-force, cat-three configuration.” Ardo ran through the category-3 checklist